So?
by Cariad
Summary: Christina and Owen reflect on the before and after in the dark after the shower
1. So?

**Disclaimer** - Grey's Anatomy belong to someone else, but Owen Hunt seems to have taken up temporary residence in my head (which is a bit worrying)

**A/N** - This is my first ever Grey's Anatomy story, written simply because Owen and Cristina are an amazing couple. It hasn't really turned out the way I expected...

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Cristina sat curled in the chair, her arms wrapped tightly around her, her eyes closed but only too awake.

She had a shift in four hours. She should be sleeping.

But she wasn't.

She sat quietly, her hair flat against her head, twenty minutes of styling ruined by stepping into the shower, knowing that on the bathroom floor her beautiful cashmere jumper lay in a matted, puddled heap. No doubt it would be four sizes smaller by the time it had dried.

She should be angry. Dismissive.

But she wasn't.

She could hear his steady breathing only a few feet away where he lay sprawled on her bed and she seriously considered blocking her ears so she couldn't hear him but she knew it would be useless, every cell in her body was acutely aware of his presence. Probably had been from the first moment and repeat exposure seemed only to make it worse.

Closing her eyes just meant that she couldn't see the blur of red hair against the pale pillow and she wasn't tempted to gently touch a face that had finally lost its fine lines of tension in sleep. But it didn't mean she couldn't see him; in her mind's eye a kaleidoscope of images assailed her.

That first bizarre, overwhelming meeting. His obvious brilliance. His utter assurance. His palpable confidence in his duty and where he was going.

He called it _before_. For her, the him of the _before_ was summed in one single word: _so? _A brief word transformed into a confident rebuttal of any doubts and simple, direct challenge to every possible barrier.

She had never seen the Chief so nonplussed when as he blinked and then paused while processing the one word dismissal of his astonished query about the improvised tracheotomy. _So? _Those intense blue eyes had flicked up and met hers for a moment and she had the weirdest sensation of reading his mind. _The outcome is what matters, not the method. The patient is alive and now at a hospital for treatment - it's over to you now, what I did is irrelevant._

And she had to admit that it wasn't a coincidence that she was looking at his uniform-clad ass when she'd summed up her assessment initial assessment of this unfamiliar but apparently brilliant doctor -_ hot._

Then there were the staples. She'd maintained a professional distance while swabbing the vicious gash with iodine, but when she'd turned back to find him stapling the wound together, the leg unanaesthetised, she'd been astonished and said so.

_So? _Was the reply, blue eyes challenging, telling her _I can handle it, no sense wasting time_. Then he'd asked for her help and she knew it wasn't a detached smile they shared as she sat down to finish the job. It wasn't that she liked hurting him or that he welcomed the pain, but there was something compelling about his stoical winces and expressive eyes. It was probably a good thing that Callie had come in when she had.

It might only have put off what she now recognised had already been inevitable but at least she was the patient not the doctor when _it _had happened.

_So? _He'd asked then, searching her face for an invitation to continue their passionate kiss. _The spark is there. We don't have to know one and other to know that. Life is too short; live it__._

And then he turned and walked out the door and Christina knew that things had changed. She had changed.

She kept the whole surreal 24 hours to herself. Allowed the memory of succumbing to an instant and intense connection to slowly loosen the choking ties of her non-wedding and everything that surrounded it. But hadn't expected to see him again.

Then she did. And then began the _after_.

Those blue eyes still laid her bare. Still provoked her. Still made her want... _things..._

But they were haunted now. The absolute assurance gone.

He still had it when he operated. He made trauma fascinating. Immediate. Vital.

And there were moments when he smiled or talked to her and she saw _before._

She remembered the vent - not just the brain-melting kiss or the fierce joy in his face, but the fact that he had known that she was hurting and that he had _been_ there for her. No-one else had.

She remembered him telling her to go with her gut, as he had when he'd chosen her. Simple. Direct. Like _before._

But she also remembered being near him and feeling the tension he barely kept bottled away as an almost physical thing.

And she remembered his wildly swinging arm in the alley. His conflict as he told her that he didn't need her, while every fibre of his being _told_ her how much he did.

He'd called her beautiful and _looked_ at her, his eyes trying to tell her all the things he could no longer articulate.

And she would never forget him as he stood in her shower. Drunk and fully clothed. And he let her into his darkness.

Some part of her brain wondered how he held it together as well as he did each day, but mostly she didn't think. She just stepped out of her shoes and into the shower and the darkness. Offering her touch. Offering her silence. No empty words. No hollow attempts to _understand_.

Contact and acceptance - and, maybe, hope.

She remembered her words from _before:_ '_I don't even know you.'_

Tonight had proven how much that was true. And how little it mattered.

'So?' She whispered to herself. _I see the damage. It's not that I want to fix him. __I want him. I want us. In the after._


	2. Move on

**Disclaimer -** Grey's Anatomy belong to someone else, but Owen Hunt seems to have taken up temporary residence in my head (which is a bit worrying)

**A/N **- Time to hear from Owen (I'm not sure about how it turned out, so any comments very welcome).

**

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**

Owen woke slowly, gradually becoming aware that there was something _off _about his surroundings.

A faint click roused him further. As he levered his eyes open a crack and licked his lips he noticed that a small animal had apparently crapped in his mouth and then crawled in and died; and a marching band was thudding its way across his temples.

His foggy brain took a few moments to actually process that he was in an unfamiliar bedroom, naked and roughly tangled in expensive, but equally unfamiliar sheets.

But when he finally made the connection between his unfamiliar surroundings, the all too familiar symptoms of too much to drink the night before and the delicate, feminine scent that lingered on the pillow, his eyes flew open and he sat bolt upright.

"Shit!" He exploded, eyes darting around the dimly lit room.

Despite his spinning head, he rapidly confirmed that there was no sign of her in the room.

His eyes closed and his head sagged, chin dropping to his chest.

This was not the plan.

Okay, well waking up in her bed did feature in the most optimistic version of the plan, but she was supposed to be lying next to him, nestled on the green pillows.

And it was fair to say that the events that he had intended to precede them waking up in bed together were rather different to what had happened the night before.

Dinner. Conversation. Seeing her smile.

Trying to fathom the depths of her gaze without drowning.

Smiling himself.

A starlight stroll along the waterside.

Kissing. Feeling. Touching.

He pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose as he tried to get his mind to focus on what had actually happened.

During the day at the hospital, he'd whiled away the quiet moments planning the evening. Planning _the _date.

He was positive and was optimistic. He'd been coping.

Well he'd thought he was coping.

But he'd found that he wasn't coping at all, or rather that the thin line between tentative normality and _not being... _was a lot thinner than he'd realised.

All it took was a single enquiry about his _stories _and his fragile equilibrium was shattered.

But he'd stuck to the plan.

He'd gone home. Got flowers. Showered. Shaved. Taken out the suit. Put it on.

And he'd been ready early, not wanting to be late, so he'd sat on the edge of his bed, watching a man in a suit staring at him in the mirror, thinking.

The thinking had definitely been a mistake.

In the peaceful warmth of her bedroom he couldn't rationalise how staring at his own hollow-eyed, strangely unfamiliar face had uncorked a vortex of fears for the future and fear of the past.

Just one drink to steady the nerves had seemed like a good idea.

And one more to block the memories.

And another to ease the shaking in his hands.

A quarter of a bottle of Glenrothes later, the fear had numbed and so had the anticipation.

He'd had enough sense to get a cab, but the vision she presented as she greeted him at the door had suddenly made his abject failure starkly real.

Late. And drunk.

He remembered his rambling apology. The memory brought out prickled gooseflesh on his skin as he fought embarrassment and frustration over his behaviour. That wasn't who he was, or at least who he should be, _had been_. Now it seemed he spent half his days feeling as though he was observing a stranger inhabiting his head and his body; a stranger determined to send him hurtling, lemming-like, over a cliff.

He should have turned and walked out the door then, but the fear - or was it self-preservation - had kicked in again. Only her, or the intense focus of surgery, seemed to bring him the clarity that reminded him of who he _really _was. Who he was determined to be.

Walk out the door and that man would be lost again.

So he'd headed for the shower, somehow managing to make the decision to jump in the shower fully clothed, including shoes, seem logical.

He winced involuntarily, recalling her irritation about the shoes, then he shook his head. The shoes were just the the next stage of deviation from the plan; and it had got worse.

He'd wanted to answer her question from earlier but as he spoke he found his soul pouring out with the water that soaked his clothes and chilled his skin.

She had _heard _him. Heard what he said _and_ what he didn't.

He could only watch, mute, as she stepped forward and cupped his face, then slowly unwound his tie.

As each button on his shirt was undone in silence, he felt the tight knot in his chest loosen, one twist at a time.

Her touch was intimate but neutral, soothing. It was neither a detached doctor undressing a patient nor a woman undressing a potential lover.

He hazily recalled her gently towelling him dry and leading him, by the hand, to bed. Her dark eyes brimming and watchful the whole time.

Oblivion had come quickly and was dreamless. And now it was the morning after.

He slowly swung his legs out off the bed and stood, muscles flexing as he stretched.

He had to face the day; and face her.

Apologies he could do - as a rule he had always confronted failure, made amends and moved on.

He shook his head angrily, recoiling from memories that slipped away like smoke when he tried to confront the failure they represented and where there was no-one left to make amends to.

He forced himself to focus on what he could do. Trauma had given him that discipline.

He and Cristina could move on from the night before and, with her at his side, he thought he might be able to move on from more than that.


End file.
